New Feature Tuesday Travel Photo #linky – Leaving Tampa

January 6, 2015 By: Paula

tampa travel

I don’t know if I can even put into words how much I love active family travel. We just returned from a New Year’s cruise. It was our first cruise ever and after a week at sea I am slowly getting my land legs back. My heart is still warm from the time spent with family and the many awesome excursions we did together. Swimming with stingrays on a reef just along the coast of Belize rocked. Snorkelling alongside my husband and daughters while stingrays, looking prehistoric and unfazed by our presence, swam just beneath us was something we all needed more than I can ever explain. This winter and this year was busy and epic. December was the busiest month all year for us as a family, and for me as a business. It was exhausting. School for the kids is always exhausting. For me as a parent and advocate, school is constantly draining and rarely enjoyable. It makes me crazy. It is often a battle zone. In my heart I feel like every parent with a child who has special needs should be able to travel once a year as a break. It’s the hardest job: parenting special needs kids.

On December 28th we boarded a cruise ship and set sail together from Tampa. It was our first ever cruise and it was an experience we WILL do all over again as soon as I can swing it. That was how much I loved the experience and enjoyed the level of service provided. Last year I travelled a lot. I did so many work trips and conferences and I covered Colombia with World Vision Canada and the travel I did was rewarding. But I did not travel with family as a whole at all. Work trips are vastly different than family travel. I explored Puerto Vallarta with my one daughter in June as a blogger trip. That was amazing, but it was work too. I wrote seven or eight posts about our trip when I returned. For Christmas this year the cruise was my gift to my family. I disconnected twitter and Facebook and took a break just with them. Because we needed it badly.

This is a picture of us on the lido deck getting ready to sail from Tampa, Florida. I expect that this year will bring more chances to travel. I welcome that and can hardly wait to see where we end up next.

Do you have a favourite travel photo, or blog post from this year? Share it with me here. I plan to make this a regular feature. Travel is uplifting and inspiring. Let’s be uplifted together.

Comments

Krista: I know. I know. We are hooked. I am stupefied at the level of service sometimes when I travel. I travelled with family to the Dominican in 2013 and it sucked. The property was closing and the staff were awful and the rooms were falling apart. It was my third time to DR so I knew what to expect and this was subpar for even the DR. So this cruise in contrast to that knocked my socks right off.